Rural Life During the Great DepressionWritten by Andrew, Jonathan B., Peter, Anonymous

Despite its name suggesting something else, the Great Depression was very… well to be redundant, depressing. Life was hard everywhere, in cities life was hard, but in rural areas like where our story takes place had it harder. In the next few paragraphs the text will be explaining to you why they had it harder, and how it was actually harder.To figure out exactly why people in the rural areas had it hard in the Great Depression, you have to go into economics and it gets very confusing, but I will try my best to simplify what happened. To go to rural areas issues you have to start in the city, in the city banks crashed, they realized that everyone’s money had gone into this thing or this persons pocket, not to insinuate that a lot of banks are corrupt (they are) so they could not give people back any of the money necessary for them to go on living how they were, in relative luxury. So, people stopped buying things when the banks crashed, and when people stop buying things the economy goes down the toilet, making people believe if they spend money it will just be taken up and used for nothing, pretty much thrown in the trash, causing them to not spend which is what you need people to do in a failing economy, spend! They barley bought food from grocery stores, making the grocery stores go out of business. This left more people without jobs, including the employees, delivery people, and most related the farmers in rural areas. This made the farmers lose money to pay for things that help their crops such as pesticide, fertilizer, work hands, etc. making their crops worth less (McGovern). This causes them to get paid less and less from the grocery stores still in business. And because the crops are not first class the farmers get paid even less, until the work is not worth what they get paid. Meaning the farmers, the greatest incomes in rural areas, did not spend much in their communities, which makes the community poorer, it is a massive cascading effect that is very bad.During the Great Depression the Red Cross helped people. In the cities people have more Red Cross sites, pretty much at every corner, while in rural areas there were Red Crosses, just not nearly as many (Singleton). People would sometimes have to walk for miles upon miles to get help; many people could not even go. Another massive thing that happened to farmers is that because of the previously explained reasons, they had no money, very little at the most they could not pay for loans they had taken out on their farms, houses, cars, and pretty much everything else (U.S. Farmers During the Great Depression).

In To Kill A Mockingbird Mr. Cunningham did not pay for anything with money, he and his family were farmers and bartered for things (Lee 21). Another example of a rural family was the Ewells. Their children only attended school on the first day and then stayed at home the rest of the time. "'They come on the first day every year then leave...Ain't got no mother...and their paw's right contentious'" (27). This quote shows how times were hard and parents could not watch their children all
the time. This also shows how children have to help work at home and do not go to school.This shows how the Great Depression eimpacted the rural areas in whichTo Kill A Mockingbird took place. How the people who lived there took the brunt of what had happened during the Great Depression.

Works Cited

McGovern, James R. And a Time for Hope: Americans in the Great Depression. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000. Print.Singleton, Jeff. The American Dole: Unemployment Relief and the Welfare State in the Great Depression. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000. Print.The Plow That Broke the Plains. Dir. Pare Lorentz. Archive.org. Web. 14 Mar. 2012.